Course Calendar

Please note that this calendar is designed to be flexible: we may make changes along the way, depending on your interests and the needs of the class. Should you miss a class, you are responsible for finding out what you missed from a classmate and for knowing about—and adjusting for—any calendar changes. Professional protocols and collegiality ask you to alert us if you’ll be missing on a day when we’re having a workshop or when you are scheduled to present materials.

Recommended this week: We’re reading the New York Times at an interesting time in its early-in-the-21st-century redevelopment in both print and digital platforms. You should spend some time browsing its most recent digital manifestations on Facebook, on its proprietary applications, via podcasts, and on its web site.

Reading: NYT article TBA Sunday and a 60-90 second overview of an article of your choice, telling us why it is significant to you and why it should be significant to usDue: Rhetorical précis — “The Other Arab Spring,” by Thomas Friedman

“Our decisions about which essays to publish aren’t governed by a need for editorial variety alone. Among other things, we look for timeliness, ingenuity, strength of argument, freshness of opinion, clear writing and newsworthiness. Personal experiences and first-person narrative can be great, particularly when they’re in service to a larger idea. So is humor, when it’s funny. Does it help to be famous? Not really.”